Children have been urged to act as agents of societal change by keeping their environment and homes clean. The Executive Director of the Northern Accelerated International for Development (NAID), an NGO, Mr. Mohammed Saani Iddrisu, said children form the largest segment of the society and are energetic, enthusiastic, and open to new ideas, and as such could positively act as agent of change in their communities in environmental cleanliness. Mr. Iddrisu was addressing some children at Lamasehgu, a suburb of Tamale to change their behaviours towards washing hands with soap after toilet and before eating to prevent contracting germ-infected diseases. The programme which was financed by the Regional Advisory Information and Network Systems (RAINS) with technical support from UNICEF is aimed at motivating children to embrace and share proper hand washing practices. Mr. Iddrisu said when people especially children do not wash their hands properly; they could contract diarrhea and other infections. He said the situation where about 26,000 Ghanaian children die as a result of dirty lifestyle was unacceptable and the trend needed to be change by attitudinal means. The Northern Regional Director for the Ghana Red Cross Society, Mr. Gayoni Solomon, urged the people to have good ventilations at their homes and drink a lot of water and fruits, to avoid contracting cerebro-spinal meningitis (CSM) which had already claimed some lives in the region. He said the Ghana Health Service would soon start immunization against the disease and called on the people to come out when is due to reduce the risk of people contracting CSM. Source: GNA